Beyond the Inquisition: Ambrogio Catarino Politi and the Origins of the Counter-Reformation

Summary

In Beyond the Inquisition, originally published in an Italian edition in 2007, Giorgio Caravale offers a fresh perspective on sixteenth-century Italian religious history and the religious crisis that swept across Europe during that period. Through an intellectual biography of Ambrogio Catarino Politi (1484–1553), Caravale rethinks the problems resulting from the diffusion of Protestant doctrines in Renaissance Italy and the Catholic opposition to their advance. At the same time, Caravale calls for a new conception of the Counter-Reformation, demonstrating that during the first half of the sixteenth century there were many alternatives to the inquisitorial model that ultimately prevailed.

Lancellotto Politi, the jurist from Siena who entered the Dominican order in 1517 under the name of Ambrogio Catarino, started his career as an anti-Lutheran controversialist, shared friendships with the Italian Spirituals, and was frequently in conflict with his own order. The main stages of his career are all illustrated with a rich array of previously published and unpublished documentation. Caravale's thorough analysis of Politi's works, actions, and relationships significantly alters the traditional image of an intransigent heretic hunter and an author of fierce anti-Lutheran tirades. In the same way, the reconstruction of his role as a papal theologian and as a bishop in the first phase of the Council and the reinterpretation of his battle against the Spanish theologian Domingo de Soto and scholasticism reestablish the image of a Counter-Reformation that was different from the one that triumphed in Trent, the image of an alternative that was viable but never came close to being implemented.

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To Giovanni, because to look at the world with his eyes is to discover something new every day

CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations

1 Formation and Religious Choices

2 Origins of the Polemic against Heresy

3 Catarino Politi and the Spirituali

4 The First Phase of the Council of Trent

5 From Anti-Savonarolism to Anti-Machiavellianism

6 A Controversial Memory

Notes

Bibliography

Index of Names

PREFACE

The protagonist of this book, the Sienese jurist Lancellotto Politi, better known as Ambrogio Catarino, figures most prominently in sixteenth-century Italian historiography as the author of Compendio d’errori et inganni luterani (Compendium of Lutheran Errors and Deceptions), written in 1544 in reply to the best seller of the Reformation in Italy, the Beneficio di Cristo crocifisso (Venice, 1543). The Sienese Dominican was presented by Carlo Ginzburg and Adriano Prosperi as the antihero of their Giochi di pazienza (Un seminario sul Beneficio di Cristo, 1975), a fascinating and suggestive volume in which Politi’s Compendio was read as a litmus test to verify the accuracy of the hypothesis of the two editions of the Beneficio di Cristo. Politi’s name has appeared many times in studies dedicated to the diffusion of heretical doctrines on the Italian peninsula. He has for the most part, however, been connected to the image of heretic hunter, implacable adversary of Italian heterodoxy; and his writings have been read more to call attention to the doctrines and texts refuted by him than to comprehend his own thought.

The aim of my research has been to lift the veil that obscures Politi as a person, restoring him to the complexity of his biographical and intellectual journey. In some respects the outcome of my work has been surprising. From his entry into the Dominican order in 1517, after a sudden Savonarolan conversion that diverted him from an incipient career as a jurist and lawyer, Politi displayed an independence of judgment and freedom of thought unusual for a novice. His maturity and solid juridical formation reinforced in him a character both independent and headstrong, encouraging a path of doctrinal and theological learning free of the rigid precepts of the schools of theology. The strong Marian devotion inherited from his Sienese birth soon guided him to the reading of works extraneous to Dominican culture, such as those of Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, which Politi took in avidly along with the writings of Saint Thomas. The assignment to compose one of the first polemical responses to the Augustinian friar Martin Luther was given to him in 1520 while he was still intent on completing his theological studies. He finished them under the pressure of the controversy. The eclecticism of his thought and his polemical instinct led him more than once to bitter encounters with leading members of his order, among them Cardinal De Vio and the Master of the Sacred Palace Bartolomeo Spina. The clamorous accusations of heresy directed against him by Spina between 1542 and 1546, then repeated in the Council of Trent by his fellow Dominican Domingo de Soto during the controversy on the certitude of grace, not only testifies to the level of hostility that surrounded him but also offers a measure of Politi, a figure who could not be reduced to any one system, who did not adhere to any single one of the opposing theological schools (Thomist, Scotist, Dominican, Benedictine, Jesuit, etc.).

In the same years in which he began to distinguish himself as the most pugnacious anti-Lutheran polemicist, we find him absorbed in spiritual conversations with Vittoria Colonna and involved in intense epistolary exchanges with Jacopo Sadoleto. He was also a fervent admirer of Cardinal Gasparo Contarini, of whose doctrinal positions he became, at least for a time, a faithful advocate. Until the publication of Beneficio di Cristo announced the beginning of a phase of open proselytism and propaganda by the Viterbo group, Politi, despite his severe tone, left open a channel of dialogue and argument, convinced that it was both possible and necessary to find a meeting point even on those doctrinal questions that Luther had arbitrarily appropriated. And in the years that followed he never abandoned the hope of leading the most convinced dissenters back to orthodoxy. His aspirations and his attitude solidified in the course of his activity in the early 1540s in the noninquisitorial resolutions of numerous cases of heresy, activity Politi carried on with the collaboration of some members of the Company of Jesus, above all Alfonso Salmerón. This strategy tended toward the art of persuasion rather than the use of weapons of repression in order to lead heretics back to Catholic orthodoxy. It deliberately offered an alternative to inquisitorial activity, moving beyond the inquisition. In addition, while the Beneficio was directly opposed by the Compendio, at the Council of Trent Politi shared his battles with personages such as the Benedictines Luciano degli Ottoni and Isidoro Cucchi da Chiari, colleagues of Benedetto da Mantova, author of the Beneficio. Readers will be able to judge for themselves whether these apparent contradictions are the fruit of an intellectual incoherence, a circumstantial opportunism, or instead, as I believe, a reflection of the variety and fluidity of doctrinal options that characterized the religious crisis of the 1540s and of the fragility of those historiographical interpretations that have used excessively schematic categories (e.g., the Intransigenti and the Spirituali) to study the furious encounters of those years on central themes of religious debate such as justification and the certitude of grace.

Certainly, Politi never hid his career ambitions and always succeeded in winning the sympathy and benevolence of the most influential personalities in the circles he chose to frequent, beginning with the popes he had the fortune to know. After all, his ecclesiology, centering on papal primacy, could only lead him in that direction. His choices and his comportment were, however, almost always guided by his innermost convictions, which he did not know how to forswear, even in the most delicate quandaries of his life’s course. In the single case in which he was constrained to rethink in critical terms a choice made in his youth, that of his Savonarolan loyalties, which engaged him in a long and tormented process of self-reflection, he found a solution only in the last years of his life. And only then, when the name of his old master Savonarola was paired with that of his bitterest enemy, Bernardo Ochino, did the circle of his existence seem at last to close.

The Fondazione Luigi Firpo and the Fondazione Michele Pellegrino of Turin supported this research project with long-term fellowships, providing freedom and peace of mind for the completion of the book. A Bourse Georges et Pierre Regard of the Institut d’Histoire de Reformation of Geneva gave me the opportunity to work for two months in truly privileged conditions. My particular thanks to Maria Cristina Pitassi, Irena Backus, and Marlene Jaouich.

This book first appeared in a series edited by Antonio Rotondò for the Italian publisher Olschki. From him I learned a great deal, especially the rigor and civil passion that should always distinguish our calling. I remember him with emotion, fondness, and gratitude.

At the University of Notre Dame Press I received invaluable help from Stephen Little. He believed in this book from the beginning and made it possible to finance the translation and finally publish the book. Thanks also to the anonymous reader for useful comments and suggestions. This English edition would not have been possible without the trust accorded to me by Donald Weinstein. He not only welcomed the Italian edition of the book, but promoted the English version and translated the text. Donald Weinstein sadly died after completing the translation of this book. The entire community of scholars mourn the death of a master of Renaissance studies.

Finally and above all I offer my thanks to my wife, Stefania, for the feelings we have shared and for all that we have created together in these years. If this book has overcome the difficulties it has encountered this also has been due to her merits.

Rome, November 2015

ABBREVIATIONS

CHAPTER 1

Formation and Religious Choices

SIENESE LAWYER

Lancellotto Politi was born in 1484 to a prominent Sienese family.¹ With the completion of his studies in philosophia civilis at the age of seventeen he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Laws and launched a brief but active career as a jurisconsult.² This culminated a few years later in his appointment as an attorney of the consistory. The few sources we have of his activities in the law create an impression of a marked tendency toward controversy and contentiousness.³ Just what family influences or features of personality shaped this tendency, so prominent throughout his career, are difficult to determine, but no doubt his Sienese roots played a central role in directing his personal and religious choices. The high incidence of conflict that characterized Sienese political life from the late fifteenth to the early sixteenth century shaped, to some degree, the character of this young, ambitious lawyer: first, the clashes between the Noveschi and representatives of the Monte del Popolo; and second, the long, violent struggles of France, Spain, and Florence for influence in Sienese territory. If, on the one hand, these made Politi sensitive to the sources of political factionalism, on the other, the future Dominican controversialist learned from them the nature and value of passionate defense of a cause.⁴

The principal legacy Politi inherited from his fellow Sienese was their devotion to the Immaculate Conception.⁵ Politi’s first literary effort gives significant testimony to this. La sconficta di Monte Aperto of 1502, which he wrote shortly after he received the Doctor of Laws degree, is an homage to his native city as well as early evidence of the solid Marian devotion that he as a good Sienese had absorbed from adolescence.⁶ The choice of theme was quite deliberate, it appears. The battle of Montaperti of September 4, 1260, was Siena’s greatest victory over its eternal rival, Florence. This was an event so exceptional in the panorama of the city’s foreign relations that in their accounts of the battle Sienese chroniclers used the same title employed by Politi, La sconficta di Monte Aperto, to focus attention on the defeat of the Florentines and to remind the Sienese that their own city was not invincible. It had been defeated before and could be defeated again. For so clever a young Sienese as Politi it was not difficult to transform the story of the defeat, so often recited by his elders, into an opportunity for literary renown and the regard of his fellow citizens.

Without losing ourselves in the pages of a work of little originality or coherence, it is still interesting to note that from the very first lines of the preface some of the principal features of Politi’s character and intellect are already on display, namely, personal ambition—proudly ostentatious in one place, maladroitly disguised in another⁷—habitual predilection for the contradictory, and what might be called a visceral need to present questions in polemical terms.⁸ It also shows his very powerful devotion to the Virgin, in whose name some years later he would broach the question of his membership in the Dominican order. Only then, he wrote, explaining to the reader the underlying meaning of his literary effort, simply informing all and sundry and especially the city of Siena, of the benefit to be received from that illustrious and radiant queen of the whole world and of heaven, so that our Sienese compatriots may render sincere homage to her with heart and voice, and so that to others she may be the most famous example of profound clemency and compassion toward those who humbly seek her help.⁹

We will be able to follow closely the means by which these three characteristics—his ambition, polemical stance, and Marian devotion—gave form and substance to Politi’s professional and religious choices.

After traveling through Italy and France, visiting all the famous schools [of theology], defending a thousand conclusions which he proposed for ‘public debate’ with the most famous jurisconsults of the time,¹⁰ Politi decided to become a teacher. First at Siena, then at Rome, he served as professor of law. In those years he published his four principal juridical works. The Commentaria super difficillima legis Filium concerning testamentary inheritance was published in Siena in 1513 with a dedication to his pupil, Sixtus della Rovere, bishop of Saluzzo.¹¹ The Tractatus substitutionum was published several years later at Lyon but was probably written in 1513–14. It is a work of no particular originality and characterized by an acerbic and polemical spirit. In it Politi offered the first example of his personal intolerance of the moral corruption of the times and the vices that afflicted the church. Echoing the tone of the Libellum ad Leonem X, he protested the grave corruption of the church to the pope himself, to whom he had dedicated the book.¹² The Commentaria super difficillima legis Re coniuncti de lege III was published at Pavia in 1516 and centered on questions of inheritance and patrimony. It was dedicated to Leonardo della Rovere, the senior penitentialist.¹³ Finally a brief treatise, De officio advocati, was published in 1516 on the occasion of his nomination as consistorial advocate. Politi had moved to Rome in 1513 and beginning the following year occupied the chair of law at la Sapienza.¹⁴ There he had assiduously frequented the curial circle and dedicated his writings to high ecclesiastical personalities, shrewdly cultivating his relations with the papal court and eventually earning the esteem and benevolence of the pontiff. The young Sienese quickly harvested the fruits of his political shrewdness. In the course of a trip to Bologna in which he had followed the papal party on its way to a meeting with Francis I, king of France,¹⁵ he stopped briefly in Florence, where he was named consistorial advocate.¹⁶ It was then, to celebrate his nomination, that he wrote De officio advocati in which he instructed his colleagues in the qualities required to be a good consistorial advocate¹⁷ and in the vices that were to be avoided by all means: greed, pride, ambition, and servile timidity.¹⁸ These vices, together with the ostentation and curial abuses of Renaissance Rome, heightened his indignation and lack of sufferance for the worldly circles he frequented. His mounting dissatisfaction led him to cut short his career as a jurist. In the sermons of Savonarola, encountered by chance during a brief sojourn in Florence, Politi was to find a remedy for his misgivings. Savonarola’s invective against the corruption of the times and the moral degeneration of the clergy gave Politi an outlet for his growing anger and offered him the occasion for redemption. In the promise of Savonarola’s message Politi saw a means for an effective synthesis of two seemingly irreconcilable but equally demanding needs: his longing for spiritual regeneration and his innate ambition.

FLORENCE

In these years Florence was home to Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, archbishop of the city and future Clement VII. Among those attracted by the cultured, serene ambience around this authoritative personage and his refined secretary, Giberti,¹⁹ was Nicholas von Schömberg. A few months before the arrival in Florence of Politi and the papal court Schömberg had decided to quit the office of master of the sacred palace, which he had held since 1510, to enter Medici service.²⁰ Politi was acquainted with Schömberg from the time they had both taught at la Sapienza,²¹ and it is likely that it was he who now introduced Politi to the court of Giulio de’ Medici,²² arranging for his lodgings in the house of a citizen who was one of those called Piagnoni.²³ Cardinal de’ Medici, in fact, had never concealed his Savonarolan sympathies; on the contrary, he had gathered about him many exponents of the Piagnoni party. Politi himself was to recall, some decades later, the importance of those days in determining his future biographical and spiritual path.

In the time of Pope Leo X, when he [the pope] left Rome for a meeting with the king of France in Bologna, I, following the court, found myself in Florence with it, and for the few days we remained in that city I was assigned lodgings in the house of a citizen who was one of those called Piagnoni. As I was at leisure from my law studies and had nothing to do, my host set before me the sermons and other works of frate Girolamo. Reading them to pass the time gave me no little consolation, and I thought them precious pearls.²⁴

Weary and bored by the verbose, arid books of law, Catarino discovered the precious pearls of the great Ferrarese preacher offered him by his unexpected host.²⁵ He did not disclose the man’s name, but it is very probable that this Florentine Piagnone was Girolamo Benivieni,²⁶ who in 1520 was to write a letter to the attorney Antonio Negusantio of Fano that Politi inserted as a preface to the Apologia pro veritate catholica.²⁷ During the long period of Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici’s residence in Florence, Benivieni often accepted pressing invitations from him, frequenting the table and court of the prelate, wishing to consult him even on political matters.²⁸ This hypothesis affords insight into Politi’s remarkably premature capacity to always put himself at the center of the political and cultural life of the places where he was living, to form influential friendships that could shield him from snares and dangers and at the same time guarantee him visibility and success.

Girolamo Benivieni, the older brother of the noted humanist Domenico,²⁹ who translated various Savonarolan works, was a clear example of a fervent Savonarolan perfectly integrated into the Medici mechanisms of power, reconciling his new political orientation in the regime with a coherent, passionate Piagnone profession of faith.³⁰ In 1513, immediately after the Medici restoration, he paid homage to the newly elected Medici pope, Leo X, with a Frottola pro papa Leone in renovatione Ecclesiae in which he expressed the hope that this very Medici might be the Papa Angelico foretold by Savonarola, capable of realizing through direct divine inspiration the greatly hoped for reform of the church. Despite the Medici crackdown following the conspiracy of 1522, Benivieni succeeded in saving his position and authority and was even proposed as the tutor of the future duke Cosimo.³¹

One of those who put Benivieni forward was, as previously indicated, the archbishop of Florence, Giulio de’ Medici, cousin of the newly elected Leo X and himself a Piagnone sympathizer and promoter of a policy of conciliation toward the supporters of the previous regime. Against the most intransigent Medici faction, it seems to have been Giulio who promoted an atmosphere of openness and dialogue even in those most delicate moments of Florentine history when extremists violently attempted to reverse the political direction of the city and involved him personally. The first hard challenge to his policy was the Boscoli-Capponi conspiracy of 1513. The Convent of San Marco came to be involved in the plot, and Giulio de’ Medici was constrained to immediately dispatch a trusted agent reclaiming the right to inspect the interior of the convent. The incident in effect marked the beginning of the spiral of repression by Medici authority that culminated in the decrees of 1516–17. Yet, even in these changed circumstances, Giulio de’ Medici gave proof of his moderation and liberality. Although perfectly aware of the Savonarolan overtones of the conspiracy, he did not give way to the new climate of repression many tried to impose. In December 1513 he contacted his nephew Lorenzo, asking him to monitor the repercussions of the preaching in Florence of the Franciscan Francesco of Montepulciano. He bid his correspondent not to exaggerate the matter and minimized its significance.³² Although it is not known what position the cardinal took with regard to the repressive action coordinated by Leo X, it is known that after the decrees of 1516–17 Giulio de’ Medici continued to pursue his usual conciliatory policy, despite the general hostility of the more intransigent Medici supporters.³³

The cardinal continued to cultivate popular consensus supported by Benivieni, frequently yielding to demagogy while dealing with the Piagnoni sympathizers. The response came soon: To manifest effectively his popular sympathies, he began to gather and preserve the relics of the friar’s devotees [among whom Girolamo Benivieni]. They, celebrating and extolling the cardinal’s generosity, went so far as to claim that this was the man and this was the moment of Florentine liberty prophesied by the padre.³⁴ When the Piagnone Francesco de’ Ricci, inspired by a divine revelation, assigned Giulio de’ Medici a salvific role in the destiny of the city, his investiture followed promptly.³⁵ Thus, in a city destabilized by continuous political upheavals, Giulio de’ Medici and Girolamo Benivieni represented a guarantee of continuity. It was an association destined to endure for some time. As late as 1530, after the tragic siege of Florence and the cardinal’s election to the papacy, Benivieni sent him an impassioned letter recording their common Savonarolan past: Your Holiness can recall what I told you years ago about fra Girolamo Savonarola and of the things he predicted.³⁶ Benivieni’s appeals on behalf of a papal intervention to promote democratic reforms in view of the new Florentine government went unheeded. Yet, apart from its more ingenuous aspects, Benivieni’s proposal was evidence of the solid relationship between two personalities who, however diverse, nevertheless were linked by a common disposition toward conciliation. In a Florence characterized by hatreds and divisions, both of them sought to pacify hearts and promote Savonarolan aspirations for reform of the church.

Not until the failed conspiracy of the Orti Oricellari of 1522 did Giulio de’ Medici choose to end the dialogue permanently. A few months later, in Rome for the conclave that was to elect him pope, he left Florence in the hands of the cardinal of Cortona, Silvio Passerini, promoter of a definite hardening toward the Piagnoni opposition. Politi, however, was already distant from Florence. He had left the city before the conspiracy to begin a long peregrination to various Dominican convents of Tuscany. On March 6 he was already at the Convent of Santo Stefano in Pistoia. Politi left Florence barely in advance of his Medici protector, whether because he had had an inkling of the change of climate in Florence, or because of the hostility of the pro-Piagnoni party that had leaked into the conspiracy against Giulio de’ Medici, or because of the stiffening of Giulio’s attitude toward the Florentine Piagnoni. Politi, therefore, is to be connected by a double thread to Benivieni and Giulio de’ Medici. In the tutelage of the first and the protection of the second he had found the best way to consolidate his position as a Dominican novice in the difficult Florentine universe. The benevolence of the cardinal had given him the necessary protection for his Savonarolan conversion, making it possible for him to pass safely through the violent anti-Piagnoni storm that blew from Rome (and from Florence) in the years 1516 and 1517 when he decided to enter the Dominican order.

A SAVONAROLAN CONVERSION

Politi’s conversion, as I have indicated, apparently began casually but was expeditious: only fifteen months passed between his first reading of Savonarola and his formal entry into the Dominican order. During the course of his travels in the entourage of Leo X, with its extended stop in Bologna while the pope and his court were engaged in negotiating and signing the concordat with Francis I, Politi had been able to continue the reflections he had begun in Florence between December 22, 1515, and mid-February 1516. In all likelihood this provided a new opportunity for him to deepen his contacts with the Piagnoni circles in which he had first begun to read Savonarola’s works.³⁷

In these same months the followers of Savonarola had come under heavy repression. In the case of the monk Theodore, the Medici authorities began serious questioning of the Savonarolans’ orthodoxy, demonizing their message as doctrinally irregular and increasingly dangerous to the stability of the political order.³⁸ Theodore filled his preaching with millenarian and prophetic themes and Savonarolan reminiscences that culminated in proclaiming himself the new Angelic Pope. It took no more than a few months of Theodore’s preaching before the archiepiscopal vicar initiated a proceeding against him. In a short time (January 12 to February 11, 1515) this proceeding concluded with a public abjuration by the accused. But his incrimination was above all the occasion for increasing the severity of penalties that had been invoked after the Boscoli-Capponi conspiracy. On April 7, 1515, Leo X sent to Giulio de’ Medici, archbishop of Florence, and to the chapter of Santa Maria del Fiore a breve in which he added to his condemnation of the monk Theodore a condemnation of two other preachers separate in time, Pietro Bernardino and Girolamo Savonarola. On May 4 of the same year, during the tenth session of the Fifth Lateran Council, two papal bulls were issued prohibiting in the archdiocese of Florence unauthorized preaching and confession, free interpretations of the sacred text, visions of the divine, and veneration of images and unauthenticated relics, with particular reference, naturally, to those of Savonarola.³⁹

During that same Florentine sojourn of December 1515 to February 1516, Leo decided to confront the question more comprehensively in the Provincial Synod of Florence that was to be convoked in October 1516.⁴⁰ The pontiff intended to obtain a condemnation of Savonarola that could be used as a model and be ratified by the Fifth Lateran Council sitting in Rome since 1512. But this objective was only partially achieved. In the eleventh session of the council, on December 19, 1516, the bulls Supernae maiestatis praesidio and Dum intra mentis arcana approved a disciplinary norm for all preachers. It was decreed that preaching of the Gospel conform to patristic interpretation and that it avoid any suggestion of future calamities and tribulations, setting a clear limit to Piagnoni friars and their followers. Next, in January 1517, the Florentine synod condemned the preaching and works of Francesco da Meleto, with that author’s abjuration and the burning of his writings.⁴¹ Although the vigorous Piagnoni reaction that followed was unable to prevent the issuing of other repressive provisions, it did manage to avoid the explicit condemnation of Savonarola.

Politi was to offer a fundamental contribution on that occasion. As he himself emphasized, this was the context in which he made his final decision to abandon his activity as a jurist and enter the Dominican order, becoming [Savonarola’s] partisan and defender against all who impugned him.⁴² One can easily imagine him dedicating himself to employing all his rhetorical and polemical abilities at the side of the most intransigent Savonarolans of San Marco, above all Luca Bettini⁴³ and Zaccaria di Lunigiana.⁴⁴ At that moment the profound diversity of attitudes toward the Medici regime disappeared in the common battle in defense of the friar’s memory. Politi’s letter of May 5, 1520, to the young Cervini, the future pope Marcellus II, gives us the first testimony of the spiritual motives that had brought him to the decision to enter the order three years earlier. The specific purpose of that letter was to convince the young jurist to follow his path, abandoning the secular road for that which was more secure, that is, the religious road.⁴⁵ Politi’s argument, however, despite its mildly pedagogical tone, seems to have been a fairly accurate mirror of his sentiments and state of mind. The dissatisfaction he felt for the corrupt life that he saw around him and by which, as he had already indicated, he seems to have felt himself contaminated was one of the principal spurs that turned him toward the religious life. If you humiliate yourself, he wrote, obviously referring to himself,

and live purely, serving [God] with good will, with assiduous prayer, fleeing sin and especially fleeing pride, vainglory and jealousy, and meditate frequently on death, worldly vanity, the mutability and instability of states, riches and honors, while maintaining a modest level … of living, of your actions and aims[,] … if you devote yourself to thinking often about God’s incarnation, His passion, His life, His teaching, about those who have imitated it, of their flight from pleasures, and of the brevity and moderation of their sweetness, of the continuous suffering that followed them, of their flight from prophecies and how they are not suitable to future glory lasting forever … you will at last be able to set your mind on reaching that … treasure of purity and innocence of soul, of quiet and peace, that one acquires in our holy religion.⁴⁶

To deny yourself and your will,take the holy cross and follow it manfully with a humble, true and sincere heart: this was the path Politi had chosen, guided by the prophet Savonarola to enter the Congregation of Saint Dominic,the order of good men of wonderful discretion … founded to assist God’s work, that is, the salvation of souls.⁴⁷ A path of purification by the abandonment of the vices of his former worldly life and a radical abjuration of the pride, vainglory, and envy that had characterized his activities and his ambitions as a jurist should have brought him to a profound, contemplative meditation and to the gift of eternal salvation.

However, this primary, sincere level of commitment and spiritual inspiration obscured another type of motivation, of which at first he probably was unaware (Which, however, I didn’t know myself, he later wrote of those years).⁴⁸ This was decidedly more materialistic and worldly than the first. Only some ten years later did it reveal itself, and in an explosive, scarcely manageable way. The Discorso contro la dottrina di fra Girolamo Savonarola, published in 1548, was not only, or even primarily, an anti-Savonarolan work; it was heavily autobiographical. In the first [part], Politi began, I will give all the reasons that persuaded me to believe, and for a long time nourished me in that faith.⁴⁹ The first fifty pages were entirely devoted to reconstructing the motives that had brought him to commit what in retrospect he considered the greatest mistake of his life, that is, his decision to enter the lists on the side of the friar of Ferrara.⁵⁰ I am not so indignant toward him as toward myself. What a wretch, what a fool I am!⁵¹ In conclusion he added, Everything I have written I have written against myself because I don’t forgive myself anything, and I want to imitate the just man of whom it has been written ‘The just man is the first to accuse himself.’⁵² It was, then, an act of personal liberation rather than an exercise of controversial polemic that as the pages unfolded became an increasingly tormented discourse on self-knowledge and self-purification before God’s severe tribunal.⁵³

The initial tone was no different from that of the letter to Cervini. Politi recalled his ignorance of doctrine and the guiding role of Savonarola’s writings, as well as his former admiration for the friar. At that time, he wrote, I knew nothing of Scripture nor was I familiar with the writings of the Holy Fathers and other ancient doctors.⁵⁴ For him, Savonarola’s works had truly been an introduction to Christian teachings, which in a brief time had led him to convert to Christ: In those readings I learned a great deal about Christian doctrine which I had not previously known, having always been immersed in secular studies, and, loving him as my teacher, step by step I became inclined to put all my faith in him.⁵⁵ To Savonarola’s teaching of the articles and dogmas of the faith[,] … which I was soon persuaded were good, holy and without error, were then added the opinion and fame of his good and holy life,⁵⁶ that is, the moral example of his life to which everyone who had known him could confidently give witness.⁵⁷

After this first glimmering of his doctrinal apprenticeship and admiration for Savonarola’s teaching and moral qualities, the qualities of the friar that most engaged Politi’s attention and imagination began to emerge. The intrinsic light his innocence gave him, the serenity of conscience and the great certainty he had of his prophecies; in sum, if the testimony he gave of himself appeared, on the one hand, to be excessive, on the other, it had intimidated him and inclined him to believe it.⁵⁸ The certainty of his prophecy was so instilled in him that there was scarcely a sermon that did not contain the same refrain as to appear an irresistible siren, he maintained.⁵⁹ An ambitious young man dominated by a curiosity stemming from human pride, so ambitious that he wished to know the future, usurping that which belongs to God, could only be attracted to that little man as to a magnet.⁶⁰

To be sure, Savonarola offered a solution to Politi’s concern for the reform of the church, which had preoccupied him since his first works on jurisprudence.⁶¹ We cannot deny, Politi wrote, that the Church of Christ has for many many years suffered a very great malady due to poor governance and the bad example of many of its pastors and almost all the clergy, false monks and other friars regular.For this reason, he added, I have come to believe in the coming wrath of God, or, even sooner, the compassion he employs in sending tribulations, wars, plague, hunger and other misfortunes, so that many wretched sinners recognize their sins and come to penitence at least by way of a scourging, thus obtaining eternal salvation.⁶² Still, it was not indignation alone that stimulated Politi’s conversion. There was something else that made the choice of Savonarola absolutely irresistible. It is also worth considering, he declared explicitly, that [Savonarola] had prophesied on behalf of his Congregation, as if to say that it had been particularly elected by God for the renovation of the Church.⁶³ To enter the Dominican order in response to the words of Savonarola signified for Politi the opportunity to have a special position in that project of church reform in which he believed so completely. What Politi found irresistible was the presumption of being in possession of truth, the certitude of belonging to a community of elect. It was just those characteristics that now, at a distance of three decades, he attributed with detachment and disdain to the followers of fra Girolamo,⁶⁴ those very qualities that had at one time nursed him in that belief.⁶⁵

Thus, in attempting to flee a worldly society and a legal profession now become corrupted by vices and money,⁶⁶ Politi, in his choice of a spiritual life, had let himself be guided by another set of worldly desires, namely, glory and personal ambition. In their pride and self-love, their desire for glory and worldly honors are worse than love of material possessions, pleasures and carnal delights,⁶⁷ he reflected bitterly some years later. O foolish credulity paired with love of earthly glory.⁶⁸ Political motivation played no part in this: What did I have to do with Piagnoni or Arrabbiati, fool that I was?⁶⁹ And even if his choice of Savonarola had made it possible for him to enter one of the most prominent circles of Florence, that of Cardinals Medici and Schömberg and of Benivieni, his main goal was to ally himself with the party of the just, so as to assure himself of divine grace and eternal salvation. Fra Girolamo repeatedly included in his preaching … that since all those who didn’t believe in him were wicked, infamous, reprobates, regarded as barbarians, tepid, and other peculiar names … he called them Arrabbiati. So, having already entered in that circle … I concluded with him that it was better to join the circle of the good, which however one entered by believing in fra Girolamo, than to be with his enemies.⁷⁰

The foolish credulity that had induced him to identify himself with Savonarola,⁷¹ and convinced him that he had earned the light of grace and … our salvation, was also to be the greatest obstacle to his recovery of himself. Fear of losing that hard-won salvation held him bound for a long time: I believed that whoever let go of that faith would return into the shadows, lose God’s grace, be reprobate, done for, singled out and barred from the ark when the flood came.⁷²

The course of emancipation from Savonarola would be long⁷³ and exhausting,⁷⁴ an unremitting struggle to demystify the friar’s persona and his prophecies. Those claimed certainties and declarations must not have been so powerful in me as to hold me in that belief, Politi wrote. When I challenged them there were, without doubt, unanswerable arguments to persuade me of the contrary, and I discovered them day by day.⁷⁵ The memory of that deception was to mark strongly Politi’s mental universe. His self-enlightenment was, in the years that followed, his daily mission. Just as he had been deceived by Savonarola when he was simple and ignorant, so now many other simpletons and ignoramuses were at risk of being deceived by the new word of Lutheranism. Politi thus faced a dual task. He had to continue to work toward his own emancipation, demonstrating to himself the completely illusory nature of Savonarolan prophecy; and at the same time, he had to devote himself to keeping the faithful from being entangled in the Lutheran deception. In other words, just as he saw himself as having gone through a parabola from deception to liberation, so he now saw deception as the key to understanding the danger posed by the newly emerging heresies.

The more deeply he had invested spiritually and emotionally in the Savonarolan deception, the more painful and exhausting it was to free himself from it. Seven years later, in 1524, Politi was still spending his energy defending the value of Savonarolan prophecy against its detractors. At Siena he published an Italian translation of Vita miracolosa della seraphica santa Catarina da Siena. Composta in latino dal beato padre Raimondo da Capua già maestro generale de l’ordine de’ predicatori, et tradotta in lingua volgare dal reverendo padre frate Ambrosio Catherino da Siena del medesimo.⁷⁶ To present it to readers he not only translated the Latin text with the usual dedicatory preface, but eliminated some parts⁷⁷ and added some others (especially necessary for our times) drawn faithfully from the learned, divine letters of the same saint, or from other truly proven testimonies.⁷⁸ In particular, in the third part of the work, after chapters dedicated by Raymond Da Capua to Catherine’s prophecies about the renovation of the church, the scourging of its leaders, the conversion of the infidels, the coming of a reforming pope, and more about the fruits of his work,⁷⁹ Politi inserted a long Digressione del traductore circa le verità profetate dalla sancta nostra, ove si assegnano dodici ragioni contra le opinioni dei contradictori.⁸⁰ This was, in fact, a true and proper apology for prophecy: a careful listing of twelve reasons … why the world does not believe in prophets, and particularly in the truth of the coming renovation of the Church,⁸¹ with the single aim of demonstrating their lack of foundation. In several points Politi seemed to be echoing the treatise against the astrologers by his master Savonarola, recalling attention to the need to distinguish the true prophets from the many lying prophets and those who expounded scripture out of their own heads,⁸² in other words, from all those men who earn their living with lies[,] … enemies and mockers of the wisdom of Christ, [who] invent many calumnies against true prophets and easily spread them among the crowd and, since the rabble are always ready to believe the worst, take faith from prophecies that are true.⁸³ Politi’s Digressione thus presented itself as an apology for the true prophecy of Savonarola, developed in pages where the friar of Ferrara was vividly present although never explicitly named.⁸⁴

Unless we fully comprehend his investment in this idealized spiritual and psychological portrait it would be impossible to understand why Politi’s conversion to anti-Savonarolanism was so passionate and violent, or why it took him so long to arrive at that point. I will try to follow the gradual evolution of this second conversion which, as late as 1541, during his stop in Florence on the way to France, had seen him engaged in searching for evidence and proofs that might discredit one of the numerous prophecies that had so fascinated him a couple of decades earlier.⁸⁵

There is, however, another significant indication that can be drawn from the Discorso contro la dottrina … di fra Girolamo Savonarola. In the preceding pages I briefly noted that in Politi’s earliest writings his taste for the contradictory went well beyond that of a healthy competitive spirit. This predilection for controversy had found an important outlet in his youthful choice of legal studies and in his activity as a trial lawyer, but soon controversy became more than a career: it was the meaning and purpose of his life. Indeed, a passing note concealed among the pages of the Discorso gives us further perspective on this. And the more I warmed to disputation, he wrote about his becoming a Savonarolan, the more certain I became; it seemed to me that I always overcame my opponents with reasons I learned in his books.⁸⁶ This observation is especially interesting when we relate it to the historical moment Politi chose to enter the Dominican order. That moment, as already emphasized, coincided with one of the strongest campaigns against them that the followers of Savonarola ever had to face.⁸⁷ Above all, however, Politi’s words reflected the characteristic mental mechanism of his methods: the intuition, the acquisition, the knowledge he drew from books was reinforced by his public polemic against the opponents of Savonarola, until his ideas were transformed into solid conviction. Grasping a concept, adhering to a doctrine, this was only the first step of a gradual process of self-conviction. Next he made a passionate and polemical defense of that idea or position but then challenged the idea or position, consolidating the new ideas he had acquired. In other words, Politi assimilated a given position by submitting ideas to counterargument, in the process strengthening his convictions. Without it they would have been weaker (if they did not disappear altogether).

This was the complex of reflections and choices with which the relatively mature Politi (he was over thirty) entered upon his new calling. On April 5, 1517, precisely fifteen months after his first Florentine sojourn, he took the habit in the Convent of San Marco from the hands of fra Filippo Strozzi, vicar general of the congregation.⁸⁸ Politi’s maturity, his brilliant academic career, and his fame as a jurist contributed to distinguishing him from the other, much younger novices. It is plausible that his superiors at San Marco allowed this impressive recruit certain freedoms not usually permitted by the rigid rules of the order. His novitiate, conducted by Niccolò Biliotti, the deputy master of the novices, was unusually brief. After barely six months,⁸⁹ he took his solemn vows.⁹⁰ His choice of name formally indicated his definitive passage to a new phase of life: the former jurist Lancellotto Politi now assumed the vestments of fra Ambrogio Catarino, having cast off the garments he had worn until that time.⁹¹

In the first period of his convent life Catarino Politi dedicated himself to the study of scripture and to the necessary preparations for preaching, as required by the rules of the order.⁹² However, he was exempted from following the regular course of theological studies (which generally could be pursued in one of the order’s provincial houses or in the theological faculty of one of the neighboring universities), indicating that his training must have been very flexible and individualized.⁹³ The atypical nature of his novitiate and the early years of his life in the convent explain, at least in part, the particular characteristics of his theological formation. He had developed an ambiguous mode of thought difficult to categorize and variously interpreted by historians as generalist rather than eclectic or as original or incoherent. But there was another element. The important assignment Politi was given barely two years after his entry into the order, that is, the task of replying in writing to the young Augustinian Martin Luther, impeded the novice Politi from completing and perfecting his formation of a mature theological position. The anti-Lutheran Apologia produced in 1520 marked Politi’s career in two respects: it linked his name with one of the early attacks by Rome against the Saxon monk, and it saw to it that he completed his theological training in the context of controversy.

AGAINST LUTHER

Politi was later to recall in his autobiographical notes that his first theological work, written when [I was] still a novice knight in the order was a juvenile pamphlet … against Luther’s heresy which I dedicated to Caesar.⁹⁴ Exactly twelve days after Ambrogio Catarino Politi made his solemn profession in the Florentine Convent of San Marco (October 19, 1517) Luther, in a distant part of Catholic Europe, began circulating his theses among bishops and university colleagues. Thus in the very days in which the Dominican began a new religious life the German Augustinian friar opened Christianity’s greatest fissure. The destiny of these two men who at the time seemed so remote from each other was to intersect very quickly.

Between January and March 1517 Politi’s own German associates, together with Archbishop Alberto di Magonza, denounced the rebellious friar to the Roman authorities. In May 1518 the first trial,⁹⁵ actually a preliminary inquest, began against Martin Luther.⁹⁶ Master of the Sacred Palace Silvester (Mazzolini) Prierias was asked to prepare a first response to Luther’s ninety-five theses. A few weeks later, in June 1518, Prierias’s In praesumptuosas Martini Lutheri conclusiones de potestate papae dialogus was ready for the press.⁹⁷ Luther was ordered to appear in Rome at the beginning of July to answer five accusations of heresy. Prierias’s Dialogus and the court citation were sent to Augsburg, where since the spring of that year Cajetan was papal legate to the Imperial Diet with the explicit objective of obtaining financial support for a projected crusade against the Turks. Luther refused to obey the summons and, with the assistance of the principal elector, Frederick of Saxony, obtained permission to meet Cajetan in Germany. Meanwhile, the battle with Prierias continued at long range, via replicationes and responsiones.⁹⁸ While Cajetan took the path of what has been described as paternalistic dialogue,⁹⁹ Prierias instead chose to launch a frontal attack.

The negative reactions that Prierias’s Dialogus and the successive stages of his anti-Lutheran polemic aroused in Roman circles